One of my favorite skits from Monty Python is a scene from Life of Brian. "What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?" If anyone's never seen it, here:
Whenever I start to feel vindictive towards Christianity (or the Romans), I either watch or remember this skit. (...and then wonder about ex-Python Terry Jones' rather anti-Roman sentiments in his historical documentaries, but that's beside the point.) Christians brought us literacy, which allowed us to preserve what little we could at all, which might otherwise have been lost forever. They invented universities, developed beautiful architecture, helped lay the foundations for the modern sciences, and let's face it, classical Christian art and music is some of the finest there is.
One thing I'm doing to help stem anti-Christian sentiments is by reminding myself that what's likely happening is: I'm confusing Christianity with puritanical thought. Notions like black-and-white morality, absolute good or wholly evil, play is bad and work is good, etc. has been a poison to me, and despite having never been a Christian, have sadly been a major part of my identity in my youth. I've been trying to weed these notions out for the past few years, and since puritanical thought has so many connections to Christianity, it's easy to confuse the two and think all Christian-based notions should be discarded as well. Reminding myself that they're not the same helps, especially since there's probably plenty of elements from the Old Way hidden within European Christianity. The very word "God" is Germanic, and might have been, for a while, the name used for Tiw/Tyr.
Making anew the Old Way shouldn't involve discarding anything connected with Christianity. It's only those aspects which go against our values which we should not follow.
Whenever I start to feel vindictive towards Christianity (or the Romans), I either watch or remember this skit. (...and then wonder about ex-Python Terry Jones' rather anti-Roman sentiments in his historical documentaries, but that's beside the point.) Christians brought us literacy, which allowed us to preserve what little we could at all, which might otherwise have been lost forever. They invented universities, developed beautiful architecture, helped lay the foundations for the modern sciences, and let's face it, classical Christian art and music is some of the finest there is.
One thing I'm doing to help stem anti-Christian sentiments is by reminding myself that what's likely happening is: I'm confusing Christianity with puritanical thought. Notions like black-and-white morality, absolute good or wholly evil, play is bad and work is good, etc. has been a poison to me, and despite having never been a Christian, have sadly been a major part of my identity in my youth. I've been trying to weed these notions out for the past few years, and since puritanical thought has so many connections to Christianity, it's easy to confuse the two and think all Christian-based notions should be discarded as well. Reminding myself that they're not the same helps, especially since there's probably plenty of elements from the Old Way hidden within European Christianity. The very word "God" is Germanic, and might have been, for a while, the name used for Tiw/Tyr.
Making anew the Old Way shouldn't involve discarding anything connected with Christianity. It's only those aspects which go against our values which we should not follow.
